[Sarge]

Originally Posted by kook

wow, NS doesnt sound so bad afterall.

This might be something worthy of a Monday Brief.

Any further reactions of the game?

For you Kook and K_Shizzle, change the front page please!

I wrote this earlier.

Well now, I’ve got to write a better review after seeing the dribble-like mini-review K-Shizzle posted on the news page. That was horrible and unintended for mass viewings. I’ll make a bit better of a review of the Northern Strike expansion now. ***Warning*** this isn’t going to be anything spectacular, just better than the last one and by no means grammatically correct or professional. This is just a review on playability of the maps and items from my viewpoint and perspective and my style of game play.

You get two new vehicles, the Goliath as the EU and the Speeder as the PAC. You get a new pin for taking the PAC base, hard to get pretty much on a big ass server but still attainable. You get some badges that are worth getting since they help the unlocks tree. You also get a few ribbons. I won’t go into those much since you can find what they are pretty easily. There are new unlocks, for Recon you get longer invisibility, though you aren’t completely invisible so watch out. You also get a deployable sniper beacon that shows as a blip to the enemy commander and wipes your real blip out if you are within 60 meters.
For Assault you get an increased magazine, and a radar grenade which self-destructs after showing where the baddies are.
With the engineer you get a SMG expansion, which allows you to hold more bullets per clip, and you get the motion mine bait grenade, which when thrown draws all the enemy mines to it’s location and detonates deleting all the baddies mines.
For the Support class you get shotgun RDX which I haven’t unlocked yet but it’s pretty much a sticky round that fires out and detonates shortly dealing a good deal of explosive damage. You also get an enemy infantry beacon that shows all enemy in a 40 meter radius. Pretty cool, and one of my personal favs.
For global you get shock absorbing boots and for the squad leader you get a beacon that spawns you little team faster then normal. Pretty cool if you have it and have a squad of good players, you can wreak havoc.

Well Caslon, this expansion comes with three new maps. Map 1 is the Bridge at Remagen. This is an open view map, set in an icy winter with snow everywhere and lots of open space as well as buildings. Overall it’s a pretty cool map. The center of the map is dominated by a huge bridge, obviously the maps namesake. You start out on either the EU side with one uncappable base or the PAC side with an unlockable base at the far north. There are plenty of walkers as well as speeders for the PAC and as EU you start with a Goliath and a couple of walkers. I’ve played this map on either side quite a few times and it’s a 50-50 win. It depends on how well the teams work together obviously. You can spend your whole time on one side of the map if you so choose, it’s that big.

EU side --- Get the first base, beware of walkers coming in along with speeders. Send out recon and take some of the middle bases and spawn forward. Obviously you have to push them back and keep them back to take the home base. Have a few snipers work the forward bridge flag, it’s pretty easy to snipe them and you can rack up quite the kills. Keep the goliath covered from walkers and watch out for the defensive emplacements. On the bridge watch for mines and keep getting commander supplies. Walkers should cover the goliath on the march across the bridge. Take the outlying flags first and work you way inward, mopping up the forces along the way. Watch out for tricky little snipers trying to get back towards the forward bridge again. Send a few snipers to the high points on the bridge to provide over watch for the forward areas. Pretty much it relies on pushing them back off the bridge and keeping them contained to the middle. Once you control those two bridge points you have them outmatched in vehicle numbers and should win. There is a lot of good infantry combat and sniper battles and beware the open area. Don’t get caught in it, you are pretty much toast if you are.

PAC side --- At the outset mine the entrances to the bridge at both points heavily. Bring up the walkers and cover the forward area. Man the defensive emplacements and prepare for the onslaught of walkers and the goliath. Use strategic fire and take out the goliaths recharging capabilities. It’s easy to take down if you take those out. Keep some back to watch the back bases as they get taken if someone gets by the bridge. Don’t lose the bridge though, it’s easier to fight if you keep the spawning walkers that spawn at the two bridge flags. Provide sniper fire to kill the enemy spawning from the main base and the first flag, they are pretty easy to take down since you can get above them and get good shots with sniper fire. It all revolves around the bridge for PAC. You have to keep it or get it back you lose it. That is what counts for this map.

There is quite a bit more I could tell you from playing this map, but time and space dictates what I can or can’t say. There are little places people go to think they are hiding or being sneaky and little ways to traverse the map that I see people using but I don’t have time to tell all their secrets, besides they are so fun to kill when they think they are getting by completely unawares that I know they are there.

Overall this map is pretty fun, and one of my favorites. There is so much going on, you can play any class with effectiveness here and you have a wide variety of vehicles to choose from. There is so much going on that you will always have lots to do. The maps can go either way but is decided usually on the taking or keeping of the bridge. Whoever holds it usually wins the map so focus on keep it for either side. The first few times I played it, I hated it but now that I’ve played it more and found out more about the map it is much more playable. It’s so wide and has such a wide range of employable tactics to keep different flags that you’ll come to like it too. Just don’t get backed up to the back base as PAC and you’ll enjoy it using these guidelines above!

I’ll do the other two maps later. Hope this helps. And please replace the front news page with something other than what I wrote earlier!!!